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“Now this is going to sound outrageous, I’d rather see another terrorist attack, truly I would, than to give up my liberty as an American citizen,” he said, according to a video clip obtained by POLITICO. “Give me liberty or give me death. Isn’t that what Patrick Henry said at the founding of our republic?”

He criticized the TSA for “indoctrinating generations of Americans to walk through a line and be prodded and probed by uniform personnel, agents of the government, like sheep.”

In a statement to POLITICO, Johnson apologized for the comment but reiterated his criticism of the TSA.

“In the heat of the moment, while making the point that I would much rather fight the enemy than our federal government, I said something stupid and should have chosen my words more carefully,” he said. “…As a Constitutional conservative, it angers me that we are giving up our liberty to the bureaucratic TSA and spying on our own people in the name of false security and that has to stop.”

Johnson faces a crowded field in the May 20 primary, including state Sen. Buddy Carter, farmer Darwin Carter, state Rep. Jeff Chapman, physician Earl Martin and businessman John McCallum. The candidates are running to succeed GOP Rep. Jack Kingston, who is giving up his seat to run for Senate. If no candidate earns 50 percent of the vote on May 20, the top two will compete in a runoff.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the percentage a candidate would have to achieve in order to win the nomination outright